A Study on Different LevelStudents' Interest and Selfconfidence in English Extensive Reading

The goal of this study is to explore which English proficiency level of students will gain more interest and selfconfidence through English extensive reading by using a method of evaluation, which is a reading quiz. The participants in this study were 53 first year university students, and two intact groups were assigned depending on their English proficiency levels: a lowlevel group (30) and an upper-level group (23). The students first responded to a prequestionnaire concerning their interest and selfconfidence in English reading. During the extensive reading program, they read some modified books, graded readers and then took a reading comprehension quiz to determine their reading comprehension. The program duration was for fifteen weeks. After finishing the extensive reading program, both groups answered a postquestionnaire of which the format was similar to that with the prequestionnaire. This study revealed that both groups of students thought the English extensive reading program with a quiz was helpful, but as for selfconfidence, only the lowlevel group showed more selfconfidence than the upperlevel group. On the other hand, both group students did not show significant difference in their interest in extensive reading between before and after treatment. The most remarkable findings in this study is that the reason why lowlevel learners showed more selfconfidence after the program is the very simplified texts. Thanks to graded readers, the lowlevel group students, actually consisted of many different leveled students could choose their books at appropriate levels. Another finding is that both group students hardly have an opportunity to read English texts besides their course studies, so teachers need to give them many chances to read a variety of texts.